


nothing's wrong when nothing's true

by glnx



Category: A Way Out (Video Game)
Genre: Apologies, Canonical Character Death, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Kissing, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Repressed Memories, Survivor Guilt, i trick my readers into thinking there's smut, surprise! there's only sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-12 10:52:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18445073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glnx/pseuds/glnx
Summary: He can feel the sadness in his chest, because she’ll never understand how it feels to drown in the solace of a Mexican jungle. She’ll never know what it is to choke on guilt every time he forces down a sweet spoonful of the canned beans she thinks he loves. And she’ll never know how fiercely he wants to keep her from ever finding out just how much of his heart he left on a rooftop somewhere, where a single gunshot cracks like thunder.





	nothing's wrong when nothing's true

**Author's Note:**

> lyrics from Buzzcut Season // Lorde

He doesn’t pick up another gun for seven months.

He tries twice, but it’s like the second his skin touches the metal, the smell of red iron tries to smother him with greedy silver hands. Like it’s trying to pull him into the barrel. Like it’s trying to take back the blood he spilled, stealing from his own body.

So he steers clear of firearms.

But there are days when it’s hard to get out of bed and he can’t remember how to button up his own shirt. Sometimes he calls Carol in, gets her to help him out. Vincent has always been a man of hidden pride, though, and it often pains him to admit his symptoms to his wife. To admit that there are times he’s so convinced he’s walking in a dream. That in the moments when Carol catches him listlessly holding a spoon above a bowl, he really isn’t deep in thought but simply forgot how to lift it all the way to his mouth. That during the nights when he wakes her up with his crying, it wasn’t a nightmare.

That sometimes he sees ghosts, Italian ghosts that know his name and stay silent when he pleads.

Eventually this ache becomes too much to bear, and one day Vincent gathers enough courage to suggest visiting the shooting range. At first Carol is hesitant because she’s more perceptive than she lets on. Notices the empty bottles that didn’t make it all the way to the dumpster outside. But then she sees the bags weighing down his eyes and wonders if his shoulders have always hung so low.

“Go on,” she says. She caresses his face with her hand and a soft smile. “Just be careful.”

Vincent gazes at her from under brows sprouting gray. He rests his hand on top of hers and closes his eyes, partially out of relief and partially because of a fear he cannot confess. “Thank you,” he whispers, kissing her forehead and then Julie’s, who dozes in her mother’s arms.

“When will you come back?”

He pauses, temporarily transfixed by the pistol he’s slipping into a holster. It leaves dust on his fingertips. “I’ll try to be back before dinner. That okay?”

Carol nods and gives him another smile that she probably hopes will lift some of the burden off his back. “Promise me, Vince.”

“I promise, honey,” Vincent says. He can feel the sadness in his chest, because she’ll never understand how it feels to drown in the solace of a Mexican jungle. She’ll never know what it is to choke on guilt every time he forces down a sweet spoonful of the canned beans she thinks he loves. And she’ll never know how fiercely he wants to keep her from ever finding out just how much of his heart he left on a rooftop somewhere, where a single gunshot cracks like thunder.

  


The first eleven times Vincent shoots, he misses the center. He misses the target entirely at least half those times. He’s lucky that there’s only a few others in the compound, none of them close enough to notice his failure, and certainly no one he knows. Though, he passed one of them on the way down here, and she had tried to greet him. He hopes that she had assumed his incoherent mumbling was a “I’m good, thank you.”

It didn’t help that her dark hair was pulled tight off her face, or that her small mouth was framed by pretty thin lips and her narrow brown eyes took attention away from a nose that was just a little too large to be called conventionally attractive. It didn’t matter a lick to Vincent—that she wasn’t immediately gorgeous, at least—because he still froze in his path and looked back at her as soon as he could.

She hadn’t seen him. And thank God for that, because that would’ve been a very awkward conversation. He would’ve had to make it sound reasonable, something like _“oh, you just look like an old friend of mine,”_ and then he’d have to stop and rethink because _friend_ tastes bad in his mouth. Not sour yet, not bitter yet, but simply _wrong,_ like an old candy that’s starting to outlive its outstanding shelf time. It’s a label that works, but only in the rudimental way that water can replace antifreeze. There’s something more, but Vincent was always too afraid to switch it out because of the way he could get burned. Killed, even.

Oh, God forbid someone gets killed.

He audibly swears when he botches his umpteenth shot. More muttered curses float lightly into the air around him as he reloads the gun in his hand and takes aim again. His fingers are starting to hurt and he can feel his pulse pounding behind his eyes, but he’s determined to convert as much of his grief into bullets as he can.

Vincent’s about to pull the trigger when he stiffens. At first he doesn’t know why, but he can feel a heavy chill traveling slowly down his back. And then there’s a voice in his ear: “Steady, Vincent.”

Something like a cattle iron prods at his throat. “Don’t,” he whispers. He doesn’t take his eyes off the target because he already knows what he’ll find.

A gentle breeze pulls at his hair, like the sigh of an angel. Or a laugh. The chills reach his hips and blossom out and up, climbing to his ribs and shoulders in no time. Vincent shudders and he can hear the gun tremble in his hand.

“What the fuck is this?” Leo chuckles. “How many bullets d’you put in the wall? Shit, and you call me a loose cannon.”

A tear rolls down Vincent’s cheek and disappears into his overgrown beard. He feels the chill shift to the right, leaving a line of goosebumps up and down his dominant arm as it moves. “Please,” he says, voice hardly louder than a thought. His body rocks like a tree in a hurricane. “Don’t do this.”

“What am I doin’?” Leo sounds genuinely surprised. “I’m just visiting. Watching a poor guy tryna shoot straight.”

Vincent clenches his teeth and rolls his shoulder forward as if that’ll make his hallucination go away. A flash of brown and a sculpted jawline nearly pulls his eyes left, but he forces himself to keep from giving in. “I didn’t ask for your company.”

“I’d be offended, but you of all people should know that guys like me don’t do well with invitations.” Leo’s breathy laugh is in his ear. “We just show up where we know we’re needed.”

“And you think I need you?”

“I said I _know_ I do. I can hear it in your voice, man. You always needed me.”

The atrophied muscles in his biceps are complaining, aching where they strain to hold a gun that might fall at any moment. Beads of perspiration have broken out all over Vincent’s forehead “What do you want?” he demands.

“Can you look at me first?”

Vincent hesitates. Then his body betrays him and he glances one, two, three seconds before staring at the target once again. But it was enough to see Leo’s face, the sorrow swimming in his deep-set eyes and the disappointment etched into his forehead. It drives the iron deeper into Vincent’s throat, nearly choking him. He tries to hide the way he gasps, but even he can feel his chest heaving wildly.

“Leave me alone,” Vincent grits out. “There’s nothing left for you here.”

And then there’s a very real hand touching his cheek, smearing the salty teardrop over his jaw. He doesn’t have to look to see Leo gazing at him. “Don’t you think you’ve ruined enough lives with your lies, Vincent?” murmurs the ghost.

There’s a scream swiftly followed by a gunshot that reverberates through Vincent’s ears, bouncing off the empty corridors of his body, hitting the wall harder with each echo. He’s surprised that he hasn’t fallen over by the time the thin smoke disappears. He checks the target.

Bullseye.

He looks to his left.

He’s alone.

 

-

 

The room is silent save the tiny breathing of his daughter. Carol is in their shared room on the other side of the wall, hopefully sleeping sounder than Vincent is. He dozes off intermittently, waking almost as soon as his head drops to the side. He keeps one hand on Julie’s crib, absently rocking it every once in awhile just to keep her asleep. His mouth has cemented into a permanent frown over the last few hours—she’s been having fits at night lately. Screaming and sobbing like she’s been thrown into the gates of hell. Sometimes it gets so bad that Vincent genuinely thinks Leo’s ghost is just messing with them at this point.

Of course, he never shares his suspicions with Carol. She doesn’t know the whole story. All she knows is that he killed Leo, and his current emotional struggles seem understandable enough. But the rest—the moments of trust shared above a shit-filled sewer, how they made music out of an untuned piano and an old banjo, the times they held hands tighter than brothers because the alternative was death—is a mystery to her. Maybe one day he’ll have to open up and explain why he’s so stuck on this one lost life. Their renewed marriage is strong enough that she should take it just fine, but something keeps him from saying anything.

A groan flutters free from his mouth as Vincent shifts in his chair, briefly taking his hand off the crib to rub his eyes. His vision is bleary with fatigue, yet sleep is so far away. The lit lamp across the room is little more than a dull golden smudge; when he looks at his daughter’s face, it’s just a vaguely human spot of peach. Hopefully one that will stay quiet.

Actually, it’s so still that he can feel Leo before he hears him. There’s a shift in the atmosphere, a bit of warmth on his side, an outbreak of shivers that hails the fallen criminal. This time, Vincent speaks first. “Don’t wake her up.”

“I would never.”

Vincent tightens his grip on the crib before turning to fix his eyes on the ghost, who perches on the armrest of the cushioned seat. When he meets Leo’s gaze, he feels his breathing hitch. “You’re back.” All of a sudden, he feels quite cold.

Leo shrugs. It’s odd to see him with a spotless face, clear of any bruises or places where the ground kissed his skin. Odder yet is how his figure shimmers sporadically, giving Vincent a haunting, murky glimpse of the furniture behind him—right through him. It makes Vincent’s mouth turn dry, allowing a sort of frost to enter him and turn his blood to ice.

Leo’s eyes momentarily shift from his face to somewhere over his shoulder, probably looking at Julie. “She’s beautiful,” he says, with a flick of a brow. “Has your ears, though. Kind of a shame.”

Vincent’s about to say something, probably snap at him for daring to speak poorly about his daughter, but the words die in his mouth. There’s something about the lighthearted tease that lifts his spirits and makes his heart implode at the same time. It’s like whiplash, how easily Leo is looking at him, how similar he looks to that afternoon in the jungle. When he was swearing Vincent out for nearly killing him. And Vincent had just laughed, patted his back, held him to his chest when he had to. When he wanted to.

“If I touched you, what would happen?”

Leo looks surprised. “Why don’t you find out?” he suggests after a moment.

Vincent stares at the hand Leo offers him for a long moment. He hadn’t meant to vocalize that query. It startles him to realize that the reason for his hesitation is a gripping terror that his touch will pass right through. “Actually, I think I’m okay.”

He looks away as Leo laughs and scoots closer to him. “Oh, come on, Vincent,” he snorts. “Don’t you remember, when you told me to skydive and my dumbass—”

“Stop,” Vincent interrupts.

Leo rolls his eyes. “There. You see, dipshit? You’re doin’ what I used to do before I met you.”

“And what would that be?”

“Dodging your fuckin’ fears. Dodging _me._ ” He leans down, gets right into Vincent’s face, and gives him a long, sad look. “I ain’t going away until you face me. Mano-a-mano.”

Vincent flinches back. A pain that’s almost physical blooms in his gut, hot like a bullet. “C’mon, man. That’s low.”

“Nah. I’m helping you out. Like you helped me.” Leo spreads his arms out and tilts his head. Something like a smirk pulls at his lips. “What, you wanna cuddle, too? Want me to drop us off a plane and hold hands while we fall to your death?”

A laugh of disbelief spews past Vincent’s mouth before he can stop it. It doesn’t last long, but it’s enough for the lines along his eyes to redefine themselves and for his posture to lose the tension he’s stuffed into his joints for months. When he gasps and straightens back up, staring wide-eyed at his companion, the large, uncharacteristic smile on Leo’s face proves contagious.

“I don’t know,” Vincent says, worriedly glancing at Julie. He exhales when he finds that she’s still asleep.

“You don’t know? That’s a first.” Leo takes a breath and continues. “Look, man. I know trust is kind of a weak point of ours.”

Vincent moans and rubs his temples, face blushing furiously with the regret he feels in that second.

“But _you_ have to trust _me_ on this. I’m trying to help you. You really want me to go away so bad?”

“I—”

“Think about your answer,” Leo warns him. “Not ‘cause I’ll get mad, but ‘cause I know you been lying to yourself for a while. And, okay, yeah. I’ll get a bit mad.”

Vincent does think. He tries damn hard, he really does, but in the end, every answer he considers won’t come out. Leo silently watches him struggle, never offering his help. In the end, Vincent just shakes his head and looks at his feet, feeling useless. Useless and cowardly. And he knows Leo can read him like a book.

“Okay,” Leo says eventually. He sounds disappointed, but there’s a trace of patience in his rough accent. “Not tonight, then.”

“I’m sorry, Leo.” Vincent closes his eyes, but when he doesn’t hear an answer, he looks up. “Leo?”

The room is silent once again.

 

-

 

On their twenty-eighth anniversary, it storms. Carol insists that it’s alright, that they can go out the following day. But Vincent doesn’t budge, because he knows that she never minded getting her feet wet and neither does he. He also refuses to stay home because he’s afraid of who might visit him.

Carol finally agrees to go to the newly revamped diner down the street with him. They entrust Julie to her aunt. Vincent watches Carol get dressed before they leave, helps her clasp that button in the middle of her back that she can’t quite reach.

“I’m afraid this dress is getting a little small,” says Carol.

“That’s ridiculous.” Vincent gives her a kiss and absently toys with one of her curls. “It looks the same on you as the day you first put it on.”

Carol smiles, but it soon becomes a frown as she studies Vincent’s gaze. Probably wonders why his grin doesn’t match his eyes. “Are you okay, Vince?”

“Yeah. Always.” But a numbness spreads through his chest all the same. “Why?”

Carol struggles to answer. At some point, she even looks a little guilty. “I don’t know,” she sighs. “You just look distracted, darling. I worry about you.”

Vincent purses his lips. He feels them tighten and crack; he hopes they don’t bleed. “We should get going. Our reservations are for 6.”

His wife stares up at him for so long that he’s afraid she might say something else. But she just nods and uses his shoulder to pull herself up and kiss him on the cheek. “Of course,” she murmurs. “I bet their steak is even better now.”

  


His mood is brighter by the time they drive back home. They laugh and make pleasant conversation in the front seats, and for once it doesn’t feel forced. Vincent’s grip is gentle on the wheel, gentler still on Carol’s thigh. It feels good to smile. Good to feel nourished. Good to love and feel loved in return.

The rain has reduced to a misty drizzle. It’s light enough that Vincent doesn’t argue when Carol assures him she can get out on her own. They pull into the driveway, and Vincent turns off the ignition before handing Carol her purse. He’s about to follow her around the car when something catches his eye in the rearview mirror.

He glances up, not sure what he expects. Perhaps a trash bin that the folks across the street forgot to bring back in. A stray cat, even. When he sees a person, though, every nerve fires at once.

He freezes where he sits. He doesn’t even breathe as he stares at the reflection, because he has a feeling that if he exhales, the other man might just disappear. It takes a tap on the window for the spell to break. Vincent jumps in his seat and looks over.

Carol stares back at him with large gray eyes. Her voice is muffled, but the concern in it is too prominent to miss. “Vince,” she says. “Come on, sweetheart. Sarah has to leave in five minutes.”

While her words aren’t out of the ordinary, Vincent can see an entirely different message written all over her expression. One that scares him, mostly because it demands answers that he isn’t ready to give. In that moment, he decides that this will be the last time he runs from her.

He nods and opens the door, stepping out as quickly as he can. Before Carol can say anything else, he touches her shoulders and speaks softly. “I need you to go inside. Go talk to your sister, okay?”

Carol’s face turns pale. “No,” she says, slowly. Then she repeats it, louder, firmer. “No, Vincent. You need to tell me what’s been going on with you. You can’t—”

“Please,” Vincent begs. His voice shakes and his throat burns with the effort it takes to keep from crying. The shock on his wife’s face nearly breaks him. “Carol, please. Just go get Julie. Give me five minutes. No more.”

Carol pauses. “At least tell me what you’re doing. Are you going somewhere?”

“No. I just—I think I—there’s someone…” Vincent takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere. There’s someone I need to talk to.”

Carol frowns and looks over his shoulder. The rain is starting to darken her clothes, something she clearly takes alarm in. The desire to dry off temporarily battles with the need for answers, but it wins out in the end. Though she certainly does not believe him, she bows her head and covers Vincent’s hand with her own. “Please come inside soon,” she whispers. “You’ll get sick out here.”

“I know. I know. I will.”

“Okay, then.”

Vincent doesn’t move until she vanishes behind the front door. He waits for it to thud shut before he turns, not knowing what he’ll see.

The phantom is still there when he cups a hand over his eyes and looks through the gradually thickening rain. His expression is unreadable, but Vincent knows it’s not just because of the weather. Even as he grows closer, he can’t quite make out the emotion he sees glittering in the depths of Leo’s eyes.

“Who can see you, right now?” he asks, preempting any pointless, robotic greetings.

Leo folds his arms and leans against the car in the driveway. “Just you,” he says. “So you should get out of the damn street before you get run over.”

Vincent ignores him and plants his feet. “Make this quick.”

“That’s up to you, buddy.”

“What is it this time?” Somehow, Vincent can’t find it in himself to care about what his neighbors might think. Maybe they’ll pity him, wondering how a cop, once distinguished and proud, could become a shell of the man he once was, now presumably drunk and shouting at no one in the rain. All because of one life he shouldn’t have taken.

“Well,” Leo says, “I thought I’d visit to give you my congratulations. Twenty-five years, right?”

“Twenty-eight.”

Leo whistles and nods. “Twenty-eight! Damn. Didn’t peg me as a guy who could hold a relationship that long. You know, Linda and I had just celebrated our fifteenth before—”

“Cut the bullshit, Leo,” Vincent snaps. He’s dimly aware of himself swelling in size, feeding on some anger inside of him that he’s not so sure is directed at Leo. “Why do you keep visiting me? I should be inside with my family.”

The flash of fear that he had barely glimpsed darting over Leo’s face disappears in less than an instant. He straightens off the car and retaliates with the same ferocity Vincent had seen the first time they met. “Then why aren’t you?” he challenges. “Why talk to me?”

“I want you to leave me alone. Let me rest in peace.”

“Rest in peace?” Leo throws his head back and howls with laughter. It’s so loud, so mocking, that Vincent almost shrinks back. “Fuck! How _ironic!_ You tellin’ a dead man that you wanna rest in peace? What, like I am? You fuckin’ _killed_ me, you sick bastard, and you’re telling me you want to, what, curl up in your nice warm bed, free of the ghosts you collected? That what you want? Be free of _me?_ ”

The breath rattles in Vincent’s lungs. It’s hard to summon enough to use for his voice and it takes him an undignified amount of time to accomplish the feat. “No, I—I’m sorry, Leo, I—”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Leo’s chest heaves with passion, more human than anything he’s ever done. His hollow eyes blaze with betrayal, taking Vincent back to a moment he wish he could forget. “You wanna know why I’m here, Vincent?”

When Leo pokes his chest with a finger that feels to be of flesh, Vincent staggers back like he had been shot. “Pray tell.”

“Because I want to be free, too. And you ain’t letting me.”

Vincent stares at him. With every breath they seem to share, a tear springs free from the pool in Leo’s eyes and mixes with the rain that’s somehow running down his face. The ghost is shaking, just slightly, just enough for Vincent to feel it, too. “You haven’t done this last thing for me, Vincent,” Leo whispers, “and I won’t stop begging you until you will.”

Emotion starts to build up in Vincent’s chest, pushing against the walls of his ribs and creeping around his heart. “Leo…” He swallows and shakes his head. “Leo, I don’t—I don’t know how. I’m sorry.”

Leo clenches his teeth and moves back. He looks like he wanted to scream again, but something keeps him restrained long enough to take a deep breath and look at his shoes rather than his killer.

“I didn’t expect you to.” His voice is controlled. Like a rabid lion on a leash. “But I thought you’d at least try.”

“Tell me,” Vincent pleads. “I don’t want to keep hurting you.”

Leo looks up sharply. “I already asked you. Last time I visited.”

“You said—you said you wanted to help me. Was that true?”

There’s a long silence that makes Vincent feel like his skin is crawling up his back.

“Yeah, it was.”

“You don’t seem very sure.”

“I am,” Leo retorts, much firmer this time. “I’m not the liar here, Vincent. And don’t—” he holds up a hand in front of Vincent’s mouth, silencing him— “say anything. You just listen to me, okay? I don’t want you catching pneumonia out here.”

Vincent looks up at the sky. He has to look down before long, though, because the raindrops have gotten bigger. One catches him in the eye, and in the moment it feels like a firehose. “Fine,” he says, more encouraged by how soaked his suit is becoming than his former friend’s words.

If Leo can tell, he doesn’t say anything. He steps back and crosses his arms again, searching Vincent’s face. “I meant it when I said I need you to face your fears. Because you’re scared of me. And that’s what’s keeping me here.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Shut up,” Leo yells, and Vincent does. “Man, Vincent, pray to whatever God you believe in that you don’t wind up getting killed one day. Because He’s not very nice to victims like me.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, whatever.” The deep lines in Leo’s face look like chasms; privately, Vincent wonders how it hasn’t torn him apart yet. “But I’m not lying when I say I _know_ you, Vincent. You got me tied to your bitch-ass soul and I can’t leave. You—you gotta let me go.”

Out of everything Vincent thought Leo would tell him to do, that was not it. His bewilderment clearly crosses into his face, because Leo stomps a foot and lets out a furious scream that Vincent is relieved no one can hear but him. “This clearly isn’t happening tonight,” Leo grumbles, turning away from Vincent. “I’ll be back.”

“No, no, don’t go,” Vincent gasps. He reaches forward, almost touching Leo’s back. “Leo. Leo. I’ll listen, Leo.”

Leo twists away before Vincent can get to him, but doesn’t move after that. Then, after a few more seconds, he glances over his shoulder and says, “Yeah, well. I’ll make it harder for you to get rid of me next time.”

“I’m not…” Vincent’s voice dies as he watches Leo’s form walk away, heading down the street. He makes no move to follow him, knowing that he’ll never reach him. In a moment, Leo is gone, seemingly having disappeared into the gray sheets of sobbing rain. But Vincent knows better.

“Vincent!”

Vincent spins on his heel, almost falls flat on his back. Carol is frantically waving at him from the porch. Behind her, a warm golden light illuminates her figure. “Vincent,” she calls again. “You get your ass in here right now.”

Vincent hesitates. Looks to his right one more time. There’s nothing there anymore, not even a shadow. “Okay.”

 

-

 

A month passes. Then two. Then three. Half a year is gone and Vincent hardly notices, because Leo doesn’t visit him again.

Because of this, he never finds reason to have that conversation with Carol. She loses interest in his peculiar behavior around the two month mark, possibly because she thinks he’s finally okay. In actuality, he’s under more stress than ever, because every night he has to pretend he’s asleep until he hears her steady breathing. Then he quietly rolls out of bed roughly a half hour later, checks on Julie, gets a glass of milk, and stares out the front porch until motion on the street disturbs him. Sometimes it’s a car, sometimes it’s an early riser. Whatever it is, it breaks the trance and leads him back to bed, where he’s lucky to get four hours.

Somehow he manages to juggle his family life with his new job at the police office. He swore to Carol that he’d never again take a job that would place him on the active field, but he needed to support his wife and child. He couldn't abandon his roots, so when he heard there was an opening in the records department, he took it.

A growing addiction to caffeine blooms in these months of silence. Honestly, Vincent never cared for coffee, but it soon becomes his savior. Thankfully, Carol is an avid drinker, and was more than pleased to share her love with her husband. If she meant to question it, she doesn’t; the only hiccup is when she forces him to go to the clinic after he falls asleep at lunch one day.

The doctor diagnoses him with chronic insomnia, only because Vincent refused to open up about Leo. He’s prescribed some medication that he never picks up and reluctantly schedules a follow-up visit within the next few months, a visit that he has no intention of going to.

In the end, he never has to forge an excuse, because Leo gets to him first.

It’s during one of the nights where Vincent is too exhausted to get his milk. Carol has long fallen asleep beside him, so still that he fears she might be dead. He doesn’t want to look at the digital clock on the nightstand.

He shifts, restless, and desperately clutches at the sheet. A part of him is alert to the way his mouth is moving, turning and contorting in the shape of Leo’s name. Like it might just summon him. He’s so used to longing for the man that the empty feeling in his core is familiar, now, so familiar that it doesn’t even feel like a hole. He’s used to the stiffness on his face when he wakes up, places were tears have dried up and left behind salty residue in his deepening wrinkles. The only thing harder than hiding it is acting so convincingly that Carol has no unnecessary reasons to worry about him. Julie has become old enough to notice the signs on his face, and so has become yet another contender he must consider.

It takes him the expected amount of time for his eyes to stay closed. He wriggles a few more times, but sleep finally swallows him whole.

  


This night, he dreams.

At first he doesn’t know he’s dreaming, because he hasn’t dreamt in so long. Primarily because he never sleeps long enough for his slumbering brain to activate.

He’s standing on a blustery plain under a thin tree that, somehow, is perfectly stationary. He looks up at it, trying to make sense of its peaceful leaves, wondering how its narrow trunk does not bow. He can feel the wind in his own hair that whips across his face. But what’s stranger, stranger than the tree, is how he does not feel cold at all. Nor is there sound. Yet the wind is there all the same.

Vincent turns in a slow circle, peering across the landscape. It’s all rolling hills, in every direction except directly behind him. In the distance are the blurry shapes of an urban skyline. And though there’s no way he could discern which city it is, the sight of it strikes him hard enough to make him stagger backwards.

He falls to one knee, leaning against the tree, gasping as he stares at his shaking hands. When he looks back up, the city is much closer. He can see the individual buildings, can see the signs of construction on rooftops. Can hear the helicopters swarming the port somewhere in its depths.

The tree still holds him up but it is starting to bend; the thought of standing on his own seems unbearable. Vincent’s body feels heavy, like he is being shackled to the earth smearing over his skin. The wind picks up, and the only reason he knows this is because it sucks the air straight from his lungs.

Something starts to sting his drying eyes. He blinks furiously because suddenly there are tears muddying the dirt between his fingers. Between each blink, a new image starts to form before him. At first it’s a shimmer, then an upright shadow, then the silhouette of a man. One blink later, and the man has a face. One more, and the man is crouching before him, softly hushing.

Vincent doesn’t even realize how loud he is sobbing.

“Don’t be like that, Vincent. Get up.”

“I can’t,” he whispers. Leo watches him sadly. “I can’t. It hurts.”

He doesn’t understand why he tells Leo this, because at first, there is just the heaviness in his limbs. But once the words leave his mouth, something like a knife enters his body, starting just above his navel. It digs its way deeper, tearing into his organs like a horrible cramp. Vincent screams and doubles over, clutching at himself and crying out even louder when he sees the blood soaking right through his dirty yellow shirt, staining his arms and hands.

He looks up at the man in terror. “Leo,” he gasps. “Help me.”

Leo closes his eyes and shakes his head once. With a wave of his hand, the blood is gone, and so is most of the pain. Something still remains, but it feels more like a parasite than anything, and stays rooted in his gut, where it continues chewing away at his emotional restraint. An intensifying sense of sorrow spreads over Vincent like an old blanket, forcing him lower to the ground.

As Leo squats in front of him, quiet for the moment, Vincent receives a very clear picture of a guilty man kneeling before his executioner. What maybe isn’t so clear, at least at first, is how the roles were swapped a lifetime ago. When Vincent realizes this, he looks up fast, searching for a sign of forgiveness in Leo’s solemn eyes. “I’m sorry, Leo,” he whispers.

Leo shrugs. “I know.”

“I shouldn’t—I could’ve done _anything,_ anything else, and—”

“I know.”

“But I brought this on you,” Vincent hisses. He pounds his fist against the ground and falls forward in a twisted sort of bow. “This is my fault. If I could—if I could bring you back, I would.”

A hand claps on his shoulder. A real one. It massages him, tries to ease the cords of fatigued muscle under bruised bones. “Vincent.”

Vincent looks up, heeding the whispered invitation. Leo gazes at him, closer than ever before, bending down to rest his forehead against Vincent’s. “I know,” he says.

For a moment that does not exist in any reality except this one, the men wait there in silence. Waiting for what, neither knows, but Vincent doesn’t dare break the peace. As Leo shuffles closer, the wind gets softer until it is no more and until the men are practically nose-to-nose. Leo rests his other hand on Vincent’s arm, encouraging him to lean in. And Vincent does.

The worst part is understanding that an embrace like this would never have happened in the lives they wasted. A life where there was only guns and lies and blood, spilled for all the wrong reasons. As Vincent sags against the younger man, he tries not to let the truth pull him down. Instead he focuses on the way Leo buries his face in his shoulder, all at once seeming very small. He focuses on the way the parasite is getting flushed out of him with every breath Leo takes and every breath Vincent feels. He focuses on the steadiness of Leo’s frame because maybe it’ll hold him up, too, even though he never did anything but force Leo down.

“Leo?”

Leo stiffens at the utterance of his name, but relaxes soon enough. “Yeah?”

Vincent doesn’t answer right away. A part of him just wanted to say the man’s name. “I always liked the way you said my name.”

“Vincent,” Leo responds, slow and drawing out the syllables. “Why? You makin’ fun of my accent?” He almost sounds genuinely offended, and it’s so funny that Vincent actually laughs once.

“Hell no. I love it. You slur it a bit.” Vincent chuckles again, holds Leo tighter. He isn’t smiling when he mumbles, “I’d do anything to hear it again.”

“What d’you mean? This isn’t real enough for you?”

Vincent squeezes his eyes together and forces himself to pull away. He catches Leo’s eyes. The words lodge in his throat, feel like a sharp bone that he can’t swallow, so he spits them out. “You aren’t,” he manages, “really here, Leo.”

Leo doesn’t say anything, so Vincent takes it upon himself to say the rest. “You want me to let you go. I’m assuming you brought me here to do that, right?” He glances away, unable to handle talking and looking at him at the same time. “I don’t know how the, uh. The afterlife, you know, _works._ But I don’t want you in limbo any longer.”

“It’s not all bad,” Leo blurts. “I mean, it sucks mad shit, but—I can visit you.”

“At what cost?”

Vincent watches whatever ready comeback that Leo had prepared die on his lips. He sucks his cheeks in and stares at the sky. “It hurts like a bitch, man,” Leo says hoarsely. “Hurts real bad. Right here.” He grabs Vincent’s hand and leads it to the center of his abdomen. Vincent doesn’t have to ask to know why. “That’s why I couldn’t stay long. Screamin’ at you last time made it feel like the damn jaws of Satan were tearing me apart.”

Vincent shudders as Leo continues to hold his hand. He can feel the other man’s pulse, stronger than his own, and it’s like he _is_ the blood that exited his body. The sense of being removed, of entering an open abyss, of losing a very vital purpose—it soon becomes too much to bear. He yanks his hand back, offering Leo an apologetic look when he glares. “I get it, man. I get it.”

Leo just nods.

They sit in silence again. It feels like hours, but in a dream, there is no sense of time. It’s never uncomfortable, but Vincent still itches for action because he knows this can’t last forever. He was never a man of many words, at least of affection or confession. For a ghost, though, he’ll make an attempt.

“You know how much I miss you, Leo?”

Leo looks up and snorts. “We knew each other for, like, half a year, brother.”

“And you saved my ass how many times?”

“More than I should’ve, knowing what I do now, you bitch.” But Leo’s eyes are anything but hostile.

Vincent nods, feeling urged on by the acknowledgement. “I—there’s nothing I can do, you know, to atone for the bullshit I pulled. I don’t know if it helps if I tell you that I was never, ah. Never good at apologies.”

“Oh, sure, I picked up on that. Trust me.”

“Then you know how sorry I am. Even though that doesn’t change jack,” Vincent sighs. “God, a day doesn’t fucking pass that I don’t hate myself for what I did. I didn’t count on—uh.”

Leo’s entire body perks up when Vincent falters. “No, keep talking, Vincent.” His tone is almost smug.

Vincent gives him a hard look. He chooses his words carefully. “I didn’t count on… _caring_ for an inmate like that.” Heat surges to his face and he knows it’s stupid, because this is undoubtedly the last chance he’ll ever have to say this. “It was supposed to be a simple job. In and out, if we got lucky.”

“But I’m too charming, eh?” Leo is certainly smug now. Looks very pleased with himself despite the circumstance. “Admit it, asshole. You’re never gonna be able to tell me again.”

Vincent winces. “I know.”

“What did I say last time?” Leo smiles. “Don’t be a pussy. What are you _afraid_ of? What do you have to lose?”

“Nothing,” Vincent murmurs. “Nothing at all.”

Leo’s voice is like a breeze. A sigh of an angel. “Then let go, Vincent.”

Vincent inhales. Reaches forward. Finds the trimmed scruff on Leo’s face. Feels a sadness that mirrors his own.

“I fell in love with someone I shouldn’t have,” he says. “And then I killed him.”

He trembles as he speaks, but for once he isn’t worried about hiding his fear from Leo. Leo listens to him, holds him, never wavers in anywhere except his hitching breath.

“I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t. But it’s a mistake I will never stop regretting. Killing him, at least.” Vincent looks up, and he hopes that the prayer in his eyes is enough. By the way Leo is crying, he knows it is.

“Regretting loving him, well—I’m done making mistakes like that.”

“You were always the biggest dumbass I knew, Vincent.” Leo chokes on his name, making Vincent do the same.

“Oh, I know. Breaking out of prison with a guy like you? Murdering a mob lord with a fugitive?” Vincent grins. “Who the fuck does that?”

“Shut up.”

There’s a flurry of motion. Someone is a little too fast and they knock heads, but pain was never an obstacle to either of them. Not when the prize is Leo’s scent, Leo’s hands, Leo’s lips. They grab at each other, rolling over each other on the ground of Vincent’s mind, ensnared in a kiss that doesn’t feel quite real. It’s so mystifying that Vincent almost pulls away, sure that none of this is true, none of this can be happening. Sure that in a moment, he will wake, and everything will be gone.

But the allure of Leo’s _everything_ is so much stronger. It’s got a magnetism that Vincent has only felt in life, an attraction that could not possibly be fabricated. He is not so creative to simply make up all the little details, like how Leo tastes like a delicate mix of smoke and nutmeg, just strong enough for Vincent to actually notice.

He couldn’t make up the little sounds Leo makes when Vincent tries to kiss him deeper, or the tiny grunts when Vincent ends up on his lap and clutches at his hair.

He certainly wouldn’t have been able to imagine how Leo’s calloused hands would feel skimming up his bare back before coming to a rest around his waist, yanking him closer like he’s trying to fuse their bodies together.

In that moment, Leo has never felt so real to Vincent. Even when they were both breathing, both living, both running for their lives. Vincent’s mouth leaves his lips because he wants to find out how the rest of him tastes and feels. Leo lets him, cranes his head back so Vincent can kiss his neck, moans softly and puts his mouth right beside Vincent’s ear.

Vincent expects him to groan something filthy, but Leo’s words make him stop. “It’s time to go, Vincent.”

“No,” Vincent says.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Leo kisses him hard and coughs when he resurfaces. “I love you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t cry,” Vincent pleads. He combs the hair back from Leo’s hair and peppers his cheeks with his lips. He twists his fingers in Leo’s shirt, trying to anchor him to this world. Leo holds on, too, hooks his hands under Vincent’s arms. But even as they try in vain to linger, Vincent can feel Leo becoming a little less full. A little less real. “Forget it. I’m not gonna let you go. I won’t. I can’t. Fuck that.”

Leo cups his face and gives him a smile that could break the heart of Hades. “Our time is up,” he says. A kiss. Another one. “You remember me, okay? You tell Julie about me, you tell all your kids when you have ‘em, you tell your friends at the police station and you don’t ever let me die. Understand? You make this up to me.”

“Of course. She’ll know all about you. Know how much of an idiot you are.” Vincent pulls Leo close, whatever is left of him. He doesn’t open his eyes because he doesn’t want to know how translucent the ghost has become. He’s still able to press his face to Leo’s, though, and whispers into his fading skin. “Know how much I love you, too.”

“Look at me.”

He does. Stares right into Leo’s eyes, tries to memorize every picture, every memory, every regret that Leo offers him there. “You don’t forget my face,” Leo insists. “You don’t forget that a guy like me could fall for a guy like you. And you take care of yourself, Vincent.”

Vincent’s hands fall through Leo’s body. All that’s left is his face. He kisses him one last time, says one last thing because Leo won’t be able to hear him next time. “Never and always,” he whispers. “Always.”

He thinks Leo nods. Smiles. Winks. And then he’s all alone.

The lonely wind howls in his ear.

 

-

 

_when vincent wakes up, carol is still asleep._

_there’s a package waiting for him at the front. he doesn't know who it's from, but he brings it in._

_there is a parachute inside, and nothing else._

**Author's Note:**

> i regret watching this series but hey maybe i'll write smut for this pair later because everyone knows the story ended on the plane from mexico right


End file.
